Life From A Suitcase

Everyone knows how the saying goes – “the grass is greener on the other side”. People are often envious of what they don’t have, even though they may have things that others want.

I can look over at my friends’ lives and pick out things that of course I would love to have. Let’s be honest, at 28 years old, there is a part of me that would love to be settled down. I have friends who have bought houses, are engaged or married, have wonderful careers. But everyone wants what they don’t, or can’t, have. There’s nothing from preventing me from having the things that my friends have, but my lifestyle makes it more difficult. Just like my friends would love to travel, and while they still have the opportunity to travel, doing to the extent that I do is made much harder by the lives they lead.

The grass on the other side always looks a lot greener to everyone nowadays with the availability of social media, and the filters we all (guilty!) use on our Instagram photos doesn’t exactly help the situation, because it literally does make the grass look greener. Use any form of social media, and it’s easy to find something that you wish you had in your life. It’s important to remember that there are pros and cons to everything, and to find things in your own life to be grateful for and put that above everything else.

As I’ve said previously, I’m a flight attendant. There are so many benefits to my job, but there are also disadvantages. I have met many people who focus so intently on the “cons” that they forget how lucky they are. To them, the grass will always be greener on the other side. I remind myself how many people would love to be in my shoes (as painful as my shoes sometimes are after being on my feet for so many hours).

My lifestyle is so different than those of my friends, but because I choose to look at the positive side of everything, my grass is just as green, if not greener than that of others. For right now, I love what I do.

• My schedule is constantly changing. It’s unpredictable, and never the same. Instead of working the usual Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 job, I work any day, and at any time. I can’t commit to things months in advance. Today is July 19^th, and I don’t even know where in the world I will be on August 1^st. And guess what, I love that? As someone who tries to plan everything to a tee, it forces more spontaneity on me. I can’t wait to have a few days in a row off so I can jet set somewhere else in the world for a mini vacation.

• What are weekends? I rarely have a proper weekend off. Even if I do have a weekend off, it’s likely that I’ve flown home in the middle of the night, and slept through the day. I’m not complaining, instead of weekends I get layovers. All over the world! And adding on to no weekends, long weekends no longer exist in my life as well. But even better than a 24 hour layover is a 2 or 3 day layover.

• I’m not home to celebrate holidays with my family and friends. I don’t get to be home for Christmas, or Canada Day, or birthdays, graduations or weddings. Let’s face it, it’s not that much fun to be so far away from everyone that I love, especially around holidays and big events. But this month alone I got to spend the 4^th of July in New York City, Bastille Day in Lyon, France, and I was reunited with my sister in NYC. It will be hard to be away from home again at Christmas time, but maybe I’ll get to be somewhere where I can have a white Christmas? Or, maybe I’ll spend it under a palm tree.

• I live out of a suitcase, and in hotels. Sometimes my own bedroom feels like a hotel, especially considering my decorations are pretty much suitcases. And one fake purple orchid from Ikea. It’s not how I would want to live my life forever, but it’s fun. When you are constantly packing a suitcase, you learn what’s important and what can be left behind. Or, even better, what can be gotten rid of. I used to hold onto absolutely everything. My parents are storing so many of my things for me, and I can’t wait to go home and go through everything. There are a lot of things I really don’t need, but I hold on to them “just because”. It’s time to move on and donate them to someone who could actually use them.

• People come and go. That’s the nature of the job. Each day I go to work, I see new faces, for both my colleagues and the customers. And then I come home, and it’s possible I’ll never see them again. It’s nice to work with the same people, day after day, and form a connection with people. With this job, you form connections because you work so closely as a team, and everyone’s sad to separate at the end, but still it’s unlikely you’ll see them again. At the same time, there’s a constant flow of new people to get to know, and I learn something new from so many of them. The atmosphere is constantly changing with each group of people, and while the tasks of the job may stay the same, the people never do. At my last job, I worked there for close to two years, and rarely had a non-work related conversation with people that sat outside my aisle, or who weren’t from my training class. I’ve met more people in this job (I can’t even explain the extent of “more”) in eight months than I ever did in two years at my previous job.

“When you wake up every day, you have two choices. You can either be positive or negative; an optimist or a pessimist. I choose to be an optimist. It’s all a matter of perspective.” – Harvey Mackay